


There's A Hole In My Soul

by lysiabeth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Civil War, F/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 00:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6172798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lysiabeth/pseuds/lysiabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her fingers brush against her arrow necklace, the one Clint had bought her as a joke but she’d worn nonetheless, and she remembers how she’d almost told him she’d loved him that day, but could never find the courage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's A Hole In My Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the prompt: things you didn't say at all
> 
> Title from the Robbie Williams song Feel

When Natasha sees Clint at the other end of the table, the Sokovia Accords in his hands and a blank expression on his face, she thinks of the things she would say to him if they weren’t on opposite sides right now. How she’d nudge his foot under the table and roll her eyes in sync with him at what William Hurt was saying, how she’d whisper to him and ask him if he wanted to go to the training rooms with him later, maybe download that new movie they’d been wanting to see since they saw the shorts for it back in Tokyo–

She stops that train of thought when she’s brought back to attention by Steve. He’s looking at her with a hard face and his fist clenched around his own copy of the Accords, and Natasha slowly raises an eyebrow at him before turning back to the head of the table.

When they finish the meeting, Clint has left, and Natasha has to help Sharon Carter with something anyways. She forgets about the movie, and forgets the last thing Clint said to her that made her smile.

-

Natasha pockets her phone with a steely gaze when Steve hangs up on her, her patience - already wearing thin due to the mishaps of the morning - dwindling even more, and Natasha looks up as Tony comes up in front of her, his hands in his pockets and his obnoxiously expensive sunglasses perched on his nose.

“I take it by your face the conversation didn’t go as expected.” He comments. Its his usual Tony behaviour - Natasha knows it well, knows how to bat it back and forth between them until they’re both happy with each other again, but today she’s too riled up. She looks down at her computer screen and sighs, deciding that if Tony wants to stay he’ll pick up the conversation himself, and a few tense moments pass before he’s going to the door and opening it to leave.

She thinks she sees him hesitate for a second, which makes her hands stop on the keyboard for a second, until Tony seems to forget what he was going to say - or probably just realise it wasn’t even worth it - before leaving.

That night, it all begins. Tony wakes her up at two in the morning with a tense phone call and clear instructions, and Natasha suits up, refusing to believe that she’s doing it without her team behind her. Her fingers brush against her arrow necklace, the one Clint had bought her as a joke but she’d worn nonetheless, and she remembers how she’d almost told him she’d loved him that day, but could never find the courage.

She takes the necklace off, gently placing it in the jewellery box Pepper had gifted her a few months prior, and thinks about the last time she had told Clint she’d loved him. It must have been during the Stockholm mission - afterwards, she remembers, when they were in the med bay and patching each other up. That was a month ago, now, maybe a few days more, and Natasha knows she’s naïve for thinking she’ll be saying it to him anytime soon.

–

Natasha stands in the line up. She’s poised, she’s ready to fight. She’s angry and tired and sick of the politics of it all, and, glaring at Steve, she wishes she could just step the few feet between them to shake him, to grab his shoulders and shake him so violently his eyes begin to roll and it makes him breathless, because no matter what the press are saying or what the government are saying its his stubbornness that got him into this, and its Tony’s stubbornness that’s dragging it out to the bitter end. 

She turns to look at Clint, who avoids her gaze and instead sends a sharp nod to Wanda, and Natasha thinks about all the jokes they probably would have made about this, before.

“That Cap, always too righteous for me, you know?” Clint had said to her, shortly after The Ultron Thing, as they both called it, and Natasha had shrugged before kicking her legs over his lap on the couch. She hadn’t replied to him, after that - too many opinions on things she wasn’t sure she could really speak up about, but Natasha had thought maybe he’d understood her, then, but now she’s standing in this line up with all of those things she never said on the tip of her tongue, and realises - like a smack to the head - that he never understood anything at all.

–

Natasha doesn’t know who throws the punch first. But it’s nasty. Her knuckles are red with blood - her own and his - and he’s panting and she has a gash on her forehead and her heart is pumping, the adrenaline and the anger and the uncertainty that has built up over the months, wedging itself between them and building up to this point, this very point, with the both of them biting and punching and pulling at each other– It’s a wall, she thinks. It’s thick and bulletproof and like glass, and it’s blurring the words between them and it’s made the other look distorted and. And.

Natasha pushes him, then, right in the clavicle, hard enough to hear it crack under her hands, and she’s suddenly taken back to the time in Kiev, and that memory hits her harder than he ever could hope to. She doesn’t know how she got there, him on one knee and panting and her standing above him ready to give the final blow, and the words that come out of her mouth are not the ones she’s been thinking to herself for the past few weeks.

“Are we still friends?” She asks. She can’t even recognise her own voice, it’s hoarse and timid and frightened but also clipped and tight and holding something else behind it, and Clint looks up at her, his face open and vulnerable as his eyebrows climb up to his hairline, and Natasha doesn’t hesitate to pull out her gun on him as he shifts under her gaze.

“Depends how hard you hit me.”

–

Natasha breaks her hand when she punches Steve. 

She promised herself she wouldn’t - she let him walk through the hospital corridors unscathed and wracked with his own guilt - and she told Tony that she was ok, she was fine, she’d stay in the hospital waiting for Rhodey and wouldn’t cause a scene–

Clint looked terrible, though. His neck was bruised from when she’d dislocated his shoulder and he has a bite mark on his forearm after he’d pulled her hair to try and expose her neck, and they also have matching bruises from when they’d banged their heads against one another, and Natasha’s resolve cracks and everything goes red and, well.

They put her in the bed next to Clint while they set her fingers, she can hear all the beeps and blips of the machines he’s hooked up to, and the curtain is drawn between them but she knows he’s awake - she’s hyper aware of everything, the squeak of Sam’s shoes outside while he waits for Scott, the doctors down the hall discussing Rhodey’s injuries the ‘beep. beep. beep.’ of Clint’s heart monitors…

She could say something, she knows. She should say something, because in the end one of them is going to have to. It would be easy, so easy, to open her mouth and just ask him; 

“Ask him what?” A voice in her head asks, “How he’s doing? Really?” She asks herself.

Natasha stays quiet. Natasha lets them put a cast on her even though she’ll be healed by morning. Natasha walks past Clint’s bed and only hesitates for one minute - she never could resist him like this, looking soft and vulnerable and calm and safe, his eyelids closed and chest moving slightly with the even breaths sleep brought.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She wants to say.

She doesn’t.


End file.
